The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Olafur Eliasson · an installation in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London, the fourth commission of the Unilever Series: a semicircular screen at the east end of the hall, lit from behind by mono-frequency lamps; a ceiling of mirror foil on frames across the full length and width of the hall; and machines that put a fine mist into the air · on view from 16 October 2003 to 21 March 2004, 158 days · the unit scored is the installation as made and as recorded: it was dismantled in March 2004, nothing of it can now be entered, and what stands is the record, the photographs, film and writing that carry its image
Mode
Installation of light, mirror and mist made for one hall: a natural phenomenon built in plain sight from industrial means, completed by the public that stands in it
Mythos
The sun as the oldest object of worship; a disc over a congregation in a long hall like a nave; sunset and the end of the day; weather as the common subject
Phase
The fourth Unilever Series commission at Tate Modern, after Bourgeois, Muñoz and Kapoor; on view from 16 October 2003 to 21 March 2004; dismantled; now held only in record
Presentation
A semicircular screen lit from behind by mono-frequency lamps, a ceiling of mirror foil on frames across the whole hall, mist building and clearing through the day; the frames visible at the edges
Register
The stillness of late afternoon or of an eclipse; a cool sublime that shows its own making
Scale
One hall, one disc, one wavelength, one crowd doubled
Governing Proposition
At the east end of a turbine hall a semicircle of light hangs below a ceiling of mirror, and the mirror closes it into a disc. The light is of a single wavelength, so that colour drains from faces and clothes and the room is yellow and black; a fine mist gathers through the day and gives the sun a halo and the hall a depth. Above, the whole crowd is doubled, small, upside down. The frames that make the illusion are left visible at its edges. The wager of the work is that a public will gather around a made sun as around a real one while knowing it is made, and will complete the work with its own bodies. It lasted 158 days, and what stands now is the photograph of a crowd, which is not the work.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Tate Modern opened in London in the turbine hall of a former power station, and its largest space was given to a series of commissions. Louise Bourgeois made the first, in 2000, Juan Muñoz the second and Anish Kapoor the third. The fourth went to Olafur Eliasson, a Danish-Icelandic artist born in 1967, and opened on 16 October 2003 under the title The Weather Project. The hall is about 155 metres long, 23 metres wide and 35 metres high, and its size had defeated sculpture shown in it.
Eliasson brought three things into it. At the east end he hung a semicircular screen, lit from behind by mono-frequency lamps. Across the full length and width of the ceiling he suspended frames covered with mirror foil. And he set machines to put a fine mist into the air, which built up through the day and cleared. The engineering was not hidden: at the edges, the means were there to be seen by anyone who looked.
Each part is required, and one of them only half. Take away the mirror and the screen is a half sun, a stage flat, with no disc, no doubled hall and no sight of oneself above. Take away the single wavelength and the hall is merely bright. Take away the mist and the light has nothing to stand in, so the sun loses its halo and the far wall its distance. The mist’s rise and clearing through the day is the part the work could most nearly do without; it reads as effect more than argument.
Movement II
The lamps gave out light of one wavelength, and under light of one wavelength there is no colour. Faces, hands and clothes went to shades of yellow and black; the hall, a building of brick and steel, became a single tone from end to end. That is what made the space feel like weather rather than lighting: the visitor did not see a sun in a room so much as stand in an afternoon that had gone strange, with the stillness of late light or of an eclipse.
The figure at the end of the hall was a sun the size of a building, low, in a vast dim space whose far wall was lost in haze. It belongs to the tradition of the Romantic sublime, and it reached elevation by the oldest route of that tradition, the low sun over a wide space. It held there for five months. What it did not do is rise again by a different road: the work gives one height and sustains it, and on that single height its claim to the sublime rests.
It also tells the viewer how the sun is made. The half disc, the mirror and the frames are in plain view, and the transport comes accompanied by knowing. This is a cool sublime by design, and the coolness is no fault. The command behind it is exact: a wavelength chosen for what it does to colour and shadow, a geometry of screen and ceiling right across a hall of that size, a mist balanced so that the light thickens without blinding. The means are few and industrial, and the making is placement and engineering more than a hand.
Movement III
The mirror did two things at once. It completed the semicircle into a disc, so that a half sun hung against a wall became a whole one hanging in the air; and it doubled the hall and everyone in it. Looking up, the visitor found the whole crowd upside down and small, and found himself or herself among it. The work’s knowledge lives there, in the body of someone in that hall under that light: the drained colour of one’s own hand, the doubled height, the finding of oneself on the ceiling among others.
The crowd learned what to do with it. People lay down on the concrete as on a beach or a field, and began to compose figures on the floor for their own reflection: lines, groups, shapes made of bodies, held up to the ceiling to be seen. The photographs of visitors lying under the sun became the work’s most reproduced image. That posture was the public’s own invention. The mirror invited it, and the invitation is the work’s; the response belongs to those who made it.
One law governs all of this: a natural phenomenon made in plain sight from industrial means, and offered to a public that completes it. The sun is made from lamps and a mirror; the crowd’s figures are made from bodies and the same mirror; both are weather produced by people in a building. The law holds without a breach, and it is never strained, since the distance between its farthest elements is one effect in one room.
Movement IV
The hall is part of the form. It was built to house the turbines of a power station, a room made for the production of energy, and the work gave it a sun. The disc at the east end of a long hall, with a congregation lying before it, builds the oldest object of worship into the plan of the building: the hall becomes a nave and the crowd a congregation. Beyond that first construction the archetype is evoked rather than built, in sunset, the end of the day, the last light, weather as the medium of the elder gods; and the particular stays particular, a London winter in a museum.
What the work brings into the open can be stated. The experience of nature in a city is mediated and made, and a public will gather around a made sun as around a real one and know that it is made. The viewer is a participant, since the mirror put each visitor into the work. Weather is the one common subject of an urban public, the thing every stranger in a city shares. These hold. But the gift is a condition of perception and of crowd behaviour, nearer a mood understood than an articulated human condition: the work shows people to themselves at the scale of a hall, and shows little of what their lives contain outside it.
It came out of the perceptual art of the 1960s and after, the Light and Space work of Turrell and Irwin in California, the phenomenology of Minimal sculpture, the horizon of Land art, and Eliasson’s own work of the 1990s with mist, light and artificial nature. Its departure was to take the perceptual chamber, made for one viewer at a time in silence, and turn it into a public square for thousands, with its mechanism exposed. The stake was real, in a hall that could defeat a work by its size and with the risk of a theme-park effect; but the means were proven, and the turn is one of degree and social register more than of kind.
Movement V
The installation closed on 21 March 2004, after 158 days, and was dismantled. As a work made for one hall it could not be shown elsewhere in its own form, and nothing of it can now be entered. What stands is the record: the photographs, the film and the writing. They keep the image of the work, the sun, the crowd and the mirror, and they do not keep its knowing, which was in the light on a visitor’s own hand. The photograph of a crowd lying under a made sun is the work’s most famous survival, and it is not the work.
Its reach is wide and documented in kind. The Turbine Hall commissions after it were measured against it. The immersive and participatory installation became a standard museum form over the following two decades, and the image of a crowd photographing itself in a work anticipated the culture of the shareable installation. Some of that reach belongs to a broad tendency of which this is the best-known instance rather than its origin, and the means were inherited, so the change it made is of scale, audience and institution more than of what art can be. Twenty-three years of discussion have not closed: the crowd’s self-display as critique or as product, the exposed illusion as illusion or not, the sponsor’s name over a public square.
Beside it on this desk stands Maman, at 8.3, the first commission in the same hall, a whole form that survives in permanent casts; and In and Out of Love, at 7.7, an installation of the period that has been made again. The difference in survival is the difference between a procedure that can be restaged and a room that cannot. The orders the work held were the natural order, perception and the body, the urban public, the institution and the building’s industrial past, integrated by one configuration; there was no person in it but the visitor. For five months a sun stood at the end of a power station, and people lay down on the floor to find themselves on the ceiling.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test is passed by the main parts. Take away the mirror and the screen is a half sun, a stage flat; the disc, the doubling of the hall and the visitors’ sight of themselves all go, and with them most of what the work does. Take away the mono-frequency light and the hall is merely bright; it is the single wavelength that drains colour from faces and clothes and makes the space feel like weather rather than lighting. Take away the mist and the light has nothing to stand in. Where the axis gives: the mist’s daily cycle reads as effect more than argument. Required parts, few, and one of them half ornamental.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Disclosure through space is credited in full. What it brings into the open can be stated: that the experience of nature in a city is mediated and made, and that a public will gather around a made sun as around a real one and know it is made; that the viewer is a participant, since the mirror put each visitor into the work and the crowd learned to compose figures on the floor for its own reflection; that weather is the one common subject of an urban public. These hold. What holds the axis: the strongest gift is a condition of perception and of crowd behaviour, nearer a mood richly understood than an articulated human condition. Disclosure of seeing, more than of a life.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The height is real and was sustained for five months: a sun the size of a building low in a vast dim hall, the far wall lost in haze, the ceiling holding an inverted crowd. The single wavelength gave the space the stillness of late afternoon or of an eclipse, and the visitors’ response, lying down on the concrete as on a beach or a field, is the best evidence that the elevation was felt rather than admired. It belongs to the tradition of the Romantic sublime. Held for two reasons: the work rises once and holds there, by one route; and it shows how its sun is made, so that the transport comes with knowing. The coolness is not charged. The singleness is.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The sun is the oldest object of worship, and the work builds one: a disc over a congregation in a long hall like a nave, with people prone before it. That much is constructed, by the shape of the hall and the placement of the disc at its end. The rest is evoked: sunset, the end of a day, the last light, weather as the elder gods’ medium. The congregation’s posture was the public’s own invention, and the strongest archetypal image the work produced, the crowd seen lying in the mirror, belongs to its reception as much as to its construction. The particular stays particular, a London winter and a power station turned museum, and the archetype is never made load-bearing beyond the first gesture of making a sun.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The inheritance is the perceptual art of the 1960s and after: Light and Space in California, Turrell and Irwin; the phenomenology of Minimal sculpture; the horizon of Land art; and Eliasson’s own earlier work with mist, light and artificial nature through the 1990s. The departure is in scale and address. It took the perceptual chamber, made for one viewer at a time in silence, and made it a public square for thousands, and it exposed its mechanism where the Light and Space rooms hid theirs. The stake was real: a very large commission in a hall that had defeated sculpture by its size, with the risk of a theme-park effect. But the means were proven, and the turn is of degree and social register more than of kind.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Would a different form change what the work knows? Almost wholly. What it knows exists only in the body of a visitor in that hall under that light: the drained colour of one’s own hand, the doubled height, finding oneself small on the ceiling among others. A photograph keeps the image and loses the knowing, which is why the record, however famous, is not the work. The hall is part of the form: the turbine hall of a power station, a building made for energy, given a sun. Held below the higher marks because the form is a configuration of effects that could be set in another large room with a loss of degree rather than of kind, and because the mist and its cycle are less bound to the knowledge than the mirror and the light.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Evidence over promise: twenty-three years of discussion, and the literature has not closed. The work is a standing case in the argument over participatory art and spectacle, in the critique of the museum as an experience economy, in writing on corporate sponsorship and public space, and in the history of the Turbine Hall commission as a genre. Its questions are live: was the crowd’s self-display the work’s critique or its product, and is an exposed illusion still an illusion. Held low because return to the work is impossible, so the yield comes from discourse and photographs rather than from the thing; much of the discourse concerns the type of work rather than this work; and the images return the same reading each time.
Score: 7.3 / 10
The field is European installation art of the 2000s. Intrinsic force: the work showed that an immersive perceptual environment could hold a mass public in a national museum and that the public itself could be the material, turning the large commission from monumental sculpture toward environment and participation. The discount: the means were inherited, so the reorganisation is of scale, audience and institution more than of what art can be. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the Turbine Hall commissions after it were measured against it; the immersive and participatory installation became a standard museum form across the next two decades; and the image of a crowd photographing itself in a work anticipates the shareable installation. Some of that reach belongs to a broad tendency of which this is the best-known instance, not the origin.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric; for an installation, the work as it can still be shown. Form: lost as a thing that can be shown. The installation was dismantled after 158 days, and as a work made for one hall it cannot be shown elsewhere in its own form. Its defining form, the experience of the lit and doubled hall, survives only in photographs, film and accounts, which keep its image and not its knowing. Presence: wide and continuous as an image and a reference, which is given little weight. Fabric: dismantled. The span is twenty-three years, which for a work that stood whole would place the figure well above this one; the loss of the showable work takes the larger part of what the work was.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Judged as the making of any medium is judged. The command is of light, scale and illusion, and it is exact: one wavelength chosen for its effect on colour and shadow; a semicircle that the mirror closes into a disc, which requires the geometry of screen and ceiling to be right across a hall of that size; a mirror ceiling suspended over the whole floor; the mist balanced so that the light thickens without blinding. The making was left visible at the edges and the illusion still held, which is a mark of control. Held below the top because the means are few and industrial, and the making is placement and engineering more than a hand: precise, without being load-bearing as the highest marks require.
Score: 8.2 / 10
One law governs the whole: a natural phenomenon made in plain sight from industrial means, and offered to a public that completes it. Take the two most distant elements, the sun at the end of the hall and the visitors lying on the floor. They obey it: the sun is made from lamps and a mirror, and the crowd’s figures are made from bodies and the same mirror; both are weather produced by people in a building. The mist, the light and the exposed frames carry the same rule. What holds the axis: narrowness is not coherence. The range between the farthest elements is real but small, one effect in one room, and the rule is never strained by anything that might have broken it.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The orders held: the natural order, in the sun, the weather and the cycle of the day; perception and the body; the urban public and its behaviour; the institution and its sponsor; and the industrial past of the building, a power station given a sun. They are integrated, since one configuration touches all of them at once. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: no person but the visitor, no history beyond the building’s, no family, no labour except as the site recalls it, and no sacred order beyond the evoked worship. The figure describes the form, one effect in one hall, and stands above the floor.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Sublime and The Living Form at 8.3, then Pressure on Tradition and The Made at 8.2. A sun the size of a building held in a dim hall for five months, felt rather than admired, as the crowd lying on the floor showed; a form whose knowledge existed only in a visitor’s body under one wavelength and a mirror ceiling, and which no photograph carries; a work that turned the large museum commission toward environment and participation, and against which the commissions after it were measured; and a command of light, scale and illusion exact enough that the illusion held with its means in view.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: the natural order, perception, the public, the institution and the building’s past are held in one configuration, and there is no person in it but the visitor, no history beyond the building’s, no family and no labour. Next above it, The Bottomless Well and The Imperishable at 7.3: a yield drawn from discourse and photographs because the work cannot be returned to, and a showable form lost after 158 days, surviving only as record. Then The Archetypal Deep at 7.4: a sun built in one figure, with the rest evoked and the strongest image the public’s own. These hold the work below Tier IV: one effect in one hall, made to be dismantled, and now known only from its image.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.3, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 8.1, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: Pressure on Tradition at 8.2, The Unconcealment at 7.6, The Swerve at 7.6, The Archetypal Deep at 7.4 and The Imperishable at 7.3 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.4, The Bottomless Well, 7.3, and The Imperishable, 7.3, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 92.7, an average of 7.725 that displays 7.7. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the work as an event and an image, from the documentation, the widely reproduced photographs of visitors lying on the floor, the critical literature and Tate’s own account; the installation was not stood in for this reading, and its technical particulars are known less well than its effect. The work scored is the installation in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, the fourth commission of the Unilever Series, as made and as recorded, with its three parts: the semicircular screen at the east end lit from behind by mono-frequency lamps, the ceiling of mirror foil on frames across the hall, and the mist. It was on view from 16 October 2003 to 21 March 2004, 158 days, and was then dismantled; nothing of it can now be entered, and it survives as photographs, film, writing and memory. The loss is weighed on survival in proportion to what it takes from the work, and on no other axis. The catalogue published with the commission, the photographs and film, and the literature are context and evidence of reach and survival, and are not scored. No words are quoted but the title. Facts and figures that could not be verified are not given or are stated as open, among them the number of lamps behind the screen, the attendance over the run, what the mist was made from, the diameter of the disc, any publicity that accompanied the commission in the city, whether the work has been restaged in any form, and whether its lamps remain in manufacture.